Bari, 29 settembre 2009

Società Italiana di Fisica

XCV Congresso Nazionale

Seoul National
University

Arbitrary superpositions Alessandro Zavatta

of quantum operators by CNR-INOA (Firenze)

single-photon Valentina Parigi – LENS (Firenze)

interference M.S. Kim – Queen’s University (Belfast)
H. Jeong – Seoul University (Seoul)
Marco Bellini – CNR-INOA (Firenze)

1
 Outline

1. Experimental implementation of photon creation and annihilation operators

2. Application to a completely classical light field

3. Direct probing of fundamental quantum rules

2
 Implementing single-photon
addition and subtraction

Use photon creation and annihilation operators

“Photon-added” state

“Photon-subtracted” state

Conditional generation schemes

3
 Adding a single photon to a light field

Use parametric amplification

in a nonlinear crystal
Stay in the low-gain regime
(eliminates higher-order excitations)

Inject a seed pure state in the signal mode ω

a+|1|ψs
s
2ω

|ψ |1|1i
s ω i
χ (2)
(2)

… whenever an idler photon is detected, the signal

is prepared in a single-photon-excited version of the
initial state
Stimulated emission regime
Emission probability increases with <n>

A. Zavatta, S. Viciani, M. Bellini, Science 306, 660 (2004)

 (Pseudo-)thermal light source

Single-mode fiber

Diffuses the input coherent beam

Rotating ground glass disk and adds random amplitude and
phase fluctuations

5
Experimental single-photon addition

6
 Ultrafast homodyne detection

• Gated time-domain acquisition

• Ultra-high bandwidth (~100 MHz)
• Low electronic noise (S/N >12 dB)
• High subtraction efficiency
(~60 dB @ 82 MHz)
A. Zavatta, M. Bellini, P.L. Ramazza, F. Marin, F.T. Arecchi,
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 19, 1189 (2001).

Density matrix
Pθ(xθ)

elements
ρ nm
Maximum likelihood
xθ estimation
Complete set of quadrature
measurements Wigner function 7
K. Banaszek, G. M. D’Ariano, M. G. A. Paris and M. F. Sacchi, PRA 61, 010304(R) (1999)
Z. Hradil, D. Mogilevtsev, J. Rehacek, PRL 96, 230401 (2006)
 Experimental tomographic reconstruction

_
n=0.1

_
n=1.15

No correction for the finite

homodyne detection efficiency

Thermal states Single-photon-added 8

A. Zavatta, V. Parigi, M. Bellini, PRA 75, 052106 (2007) thermal states

 How to subtract a single photon ?

On/off detection

Input state
Faithful implementation
of the annihilation
operator for:
- Low BS reflectivity
- Low photon numbers
9

J. Wenger, R. Tualle-Brouri, and P. Grangier, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 153601 (2004)
Experimental single-photon subtraction

10
 Less is more…

_ _
n=0.36 n sub=0.69

Thermal state Photon-subtracted thermal state

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Combining quantum operators

12
Experimental sequences of single-photon
addition and subtraction

13
 Homodyne data and reconstructions

Reconstructions corrected
for the finite detection
efficiency (η=64%)

Limited preparation
efficiency (ξ=92%) in the
photon-addition stage adds
small contaminations

Clearly different final

states

14

V. Parigi, A. Zavatta, M.S. Kim, and M. Bellini Science 317, 1890 (2007)
 Superpositions of quantum operators

Optical conditioning signal

(“herald” light mode)

Erases the information

about the origin of a “click”

Arbitrary superpositions of
operators can be implemented

Apply to any state

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Arbitrary state superposition
 Complete test of commutation relations

Anti-commutator
φ=π
φ=0

16

M. S. Kim, H. Jeong, A. Zavatta, V. Parigi, and M. Bellini Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 260401 (2008) Theoretical proposal
 Experimental operator superpositions

Raw quadrature
distributions
vs. superposition phase
17
The final state strongly depends on the phase of the operator superposition
 Testing commutation rules

After commutator

Initial thermal state

After
anti-commutator

Experimentally reconstructed Wigner functions

The state does not change in the commutator setup

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 Quantitative test of commutation rules

Because of quantum state normalization

K=2 K=3

then the anti-commutator K=0

would correspond to

The final state strongly depends Raw quadrature

on the exact value of K and can histograms for the
be experimentally tested anti-commutator
setup

Bosonic commutation relation is quantitatively verified 19

A. Zavatta, V. Parigi, M. S. Kim, H. Jeong, and M. Bellini Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 140406 (2009)
 Conclusions

First implementation of basic quantum operator sequences and superpositions

Direct test of fundamental quantum rules

Initial steps towards full quantum state engineering

…. quantum light states for applications ?

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 Florence Quantum Optics Group

Thank you for your attention

www.inoa.it/home/QOG

Email: azavatta@inoa.it

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 The photon subtraction

Subtracting a single photon from a state may increase the resulting mean
photon number if the initial state was super-Poissonian.
nsub = n − 1 + F
where
(∆n) 2 Fano parameter
F≡
n

nsub = n − 1 for a Fock state

nsub = n for a coherent state
nsub = 2n for a thermal state !!!

Photon creation and annihilation operators do not perform

deterministic photon addition and subtraction !
23

M. Ueda, N. Imoto, T. Ogawa, Phys. Rev. A 41, 3891 (1990)

 How to subtract a single photon ?

(
ρˆ a( add ) ∝ Trb M bUˆρˆ a( 0) 0 b
0 Uˆ † ) ; Uˆ = exp(λ (aˆbˆ − aˆ †bˆ † ))
PDC operator
(
ρˆ a( sub ) ∝ Trb M b Bˆ ρˆ a( 0) 0 b
0 Bˆ † ) ; Bˆ = exp(θ (aˆ †bˆ − aˆbˆ † ))

BS operator
R = sin 2 (θ )

M = 1− 0 0 BS reflectivity
On/off detection R~1%

  2 λ4  † ( 0 ) λ λ λ 
λ ,θ << 1
4 4 4
ρˆ ∝   λ + aˆ ρˆ a aˆ − aˆ ρˆ a aˆ aˆ − aˆaˆ ρˆ a aˆ + aˆ † ρˆ a( 0 ) aˆ 2 
† 2 (0)
( add ) † (0) 2 † 2
a
 3 2 2 2 
F > 98%

  θ 2 θ 4  (0) † θ 4 (0) † 2 θ 4 † 2 (0) † θ 4 2 (0) † 2 

ρˆ ( sub )
a ∝   − aˆρˆ a aˆ − aˆρˆ a aˆ aˆ − aˆ aˆ ρˆ a aˆ + aˆ ρˆ a aˆ 
  4 48  32 32 32  24
 “Subtracting” photons from special light states
Photon-subtracted
thermal state
_
Thermal
_ state n sub=0.69
n=0.36 Subtract one
more photon
_
n subsub=1.03

Single-photon Vacuum state

Fock state

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|0>  |1>  |0>
 Testing the invariance of coherent states under
photon annihilation

A coherent state is defined as the eigenstate of the annihilation operator

The action of the annihilation operator

leaves a coherent state unchanged

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A. Zavatta, V. Parigi, M.S. Kim, and M. Bellini, New J. Phys. 10, 123006 (2008)